(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a behavior control apparatus that controls behavior of a mobile object, and particularly to a technique to control movement of a mobile object.
(2) Description of the Related Art
In recent years, mobile robots and mobile information apparatuses, which work as partners of or assistants to humans within living environments of the humans, have been developed. Some of them are designed to imitate appearances, physical mechanisms and behaviors of animals such as cats and dogs, or designed to have some characters, such that users have attachment to them.
For example, an application No. JP 2004-066367 discloses a technique to judge whether a user has an intention to communicate with a robot based on the distance between the user and the robot, and generate behavior patterns based on at least the judgment result and emotion data installed in the robot.
It is possible to enable a robot to exhibit various behaviors by giving a character to the robot. However, it is difficult to solve an inherent problem that the user would get bored with the behaviors of the robot over time. This is inevitable because the mobile robots and the mobile information apparatuses are not living matters, and are nothing more than machines.
Additionally, if a robot takes actions targeting the user who is engaged in some activities, such as watching TV and reading, the user will be distracted by the robot. As a result, the robot would be annoying to the user.